A Visit From a Friend

This past weekend our friend who now lives in Abu Dhabi came into town.  Conveniently, a few other friends were in town.  We had a jolly good time.  We went to our favorite brewery on three separate occasions to enjoy incredible beer, and what is most likely the best nachos on Earth.

Here we are at the brewery, awaiting our nachos.



Here is Carlos showing his friends his robot arm.

 

 Here we are enjoying drinks at a bar.

Next we will be visiting our friend in Abu Dhabi!



Graduations, NAMI 5k, and Birthday Parties

May 6 we celebrated my sister-in-law's 25th birthday.  My mother-in-law graduated with her bachelor's degree on May 7.  It was a busy weekend with lots of family in town.    After graduation we went to a mantanza!  For anyone who is unfamiliar with what that is:  A mantanza is a celebration that takes an entire day, and consists of slaughtering an animal (in this case a pig), butchering it, and then cooking it all day.  And at the end of the day there is more than enough food to go around.  At this mantanza there was a DJ and dancing also.  In the photo below you can see my mother-in-law with three of her children.  Her other son was unable to come down for graduation.

Last weekend was very fun.  We were originally planning on going up to Albuquerque for the NAMI fundraiser, but it turns out that there was a lot more going on that weekend anyways.

Upon arrival on Friday we dropped off all of our belongings at Carlos' grandma's house and then headed to an American Society of Civil Engineers Younger Member happy hour event.  It was basically how it sounds, just a small gathering of engineers sitting around socializing and drinking cocktails.  The event was at a very nice rooftop bar.  The theme of the bar is the prohibition era, including period cocktails and music.  It was neat.  Following the happy hour we headed to downtown Albuquerque where we enjoyed some New York style pizza.  After pizza we headed to a bar and pool hall to meet some friends for a birthday celebration.  It was good to see our old friends, but could not stay long.

Saturday we got up bright and early and headed to the NAMI walk.  There were a lot of people (and dogs), and the energy was wonderful.  The New Mexico NAMI walk raised about $85,000 for the cause.

After the walk we headed back to Grandma's, showered and packed up.  From there we headed to the Sandia Casino to celebrate my cousin's highschool graduation.  The party was at a delicious buffet.  It was wonderful to see so many family members who I hadn't seen in years... and years.

The photo below includes my Dad, his 3 living siblings (the other 3 were there in spirit), their spouses, my cousin Alicia (who just graduated), my brother, myself, and Uncle Billy's granddaughters, oh yeah, and one young man who snuck into the picture.

After this graduation party, we headed to a surprise party for Carlos' uncle.  It was fun, and he was definitely surprised.  It was a part of Carlos' family that I had never met before.  We then went to my brother's house where we stayed the night.

After a delicious breakfast Sunday morning, we showered, packed up, and headed back to Carlos' grandma's.  We went out to eat with family, and then headed back to Cruces!

Good times... good times!